Inventions, Discoveries and More

Category: Trade

In 1901 a financier by the name John Pierpont Morgan created a Billion dollar company by combining several Steel mills (including Carnegie Steel and Federal Steel Company) in to one big company called, United States Steel Company. Continue reading →

Gallic born latin poet by the name of Decimus Magnus Ausonious, described a stone cutting water powered mill in his lyric poem about the Mosella (Moselle) river in Gaul (now France), written circa 360. This water powered mill was cutting marble for the city of Treves. Mills of this type may have been used throughout the roman empire for several hundred years.

Date: Circa 360 CE

Name(s): Decimus Magnus Ausonious

Occupation: Poet

Additional Information:

Hierapolis sawmill – WikipediaThe Hierapolis sawmill is believed to be a Roman water-powered stone sawmill at Hierapolis, Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). Dating to the second half of the 3rd century AD, the sawmill is considered the earliest known machine to combine a crank with a connecting rod, although neither clear ancient scripts nor engineering drawings were yet found to support this theory.

Sawmill – WikipediaA sawmill or lumber mill is a facility where logs are cut into lumber. Before the invention of the sawmill, boards were made in various manual ways, either rived (split) and planed, hewn, or more often hand sawn by two men with a whipsaw, one above and another in a saw pit below.

23 – Society for the History of Medieval Technology and ScienceShowing a picture of the Villard saw (ill. 1) he described it as the earliest drawing we had of a semi-automatic tool (alluding to the feed back mechanism which advanced the timber to the blade) but not the earliest known such saw, one being recorded at Evreux in 1204.

Fairs of Germany’s medieval cities which include those of Leipzig, begun in 1229; Frankfurt am Main, in 1240 (and perhaps as early as 1050); and Cologne, in 1360, all still hold annually international trade fairs. Continue reading →

Leaving from Fort Chipewyan at Lake Athabasca (noa Alberta, Canada) following the Peace River, Parsnip River, Fraser River, along the Blackwater River and Bella Coola River, explorer and fur trader Alexander Machenzie, a Scottish born Canadian crossed the Rocky Mountains to reach what is now Dean Channel on the Pacific coast of British Colombia, Canada on July 22nd, 1793. Continue reading →